In general the soviets won the early stages: First satellite, first man in space, first woman, first photos of back side of the moon... right into the present too, never mind the moon landing. The Shuttle was a mediocre hunk of junk. Russians built one to study it, because they couldn't understand the motivation behind it's inherently flawed asymmetrical design:

Honestly it should have never been a race. They should have been working together. Cold wars and sanctions never work - they punish the average citizen at best, while elites they were meant to punish live the good life, just look at NK. Or cuba. etc Also this gives them reason to say "see, the US is against us so let's crank up that military spending"

Ps. ak = way too small

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Originally Posted by she nice
i do drink but it's not as effective for immediate relief

it was the same for the DPRK's economy and development vis-a-vis the south until the 1980s.
prior to the 1980s, the north was far ahead of south korea's third-world/sweatshop level of development, which is why the north used to boast about the south being a massive sweatshop hellhole for multinationals, and how life was so miserable in the south, compared to the rather developed and, at the time, comfortable life in the north.

to be truthful, yes, life was rather miserable for a lot of people in south korea before the 1980s.
my family is a direct testament to this fact, as the horror stories i've heard about living in destitute poverty with the struggles of having to work in sweatshops and coal-mines during the early stages of the south's capitalist development have been practically woven into my own historical consciousness.

it seemed like prior to 1980s, the DPRK really was a "paradise" compared to the impoverished south.

this is why i partially can't deal well with this nouveau-riche bourgeois "gangnam style" bs south korea has turned into today.
what a kind of mind-boggling amnesia that the south has to its own recent history....

Honestly it should have never been a race. They should have been working together. Cold wars and sanctions never work - they punish the average citizen at best, while elites they were meant to punish live the good life, just look at NK. Or cuba. etc Also this gives them reason to say "see, the US is against us so let's crank up that military spending"

Ps. ak = way too small

well, the gap between the haves and the have-nots are quite real and quite horrendous under "developed capitalism" as well.

thus, i don't think the leaders of a nation should be singled-out specifically as being gluttonous and gloating in luxury while the hoards of masses suffer in the really-existing "communist" states that have continued to exist in the post-soviet era.

honestly, "average people" tend to suffer under any type of system (e.g., capitalism, communism, what have you) wherever you go in the world.
also, i refuse to believe that the life of a president in any "democratic" country is any less "luxurious" than the life of north korea's leader (if anything, it's much less so, since their economy is far less developed.)

the real problem today lies within a lack of national character/solidarity under currently-existing "capitalist democracies", and with the west exporting its nihilistic "secular" vision of liberal-democracy globally, partially to make way for cheap labor (as they did in the past vis-a-vis china and south korea); currently it's pushed to expand american consumer market-base and investment.

capitalist democracy drains the lifeblood out of nations, cultures, and peoples solely for the sake of a narcissistic and nihilistic "prosperity", and/or "quality of life", often not fully attainable or actualized for the masses at large, while reducing them to nothing more than a miserable replica of the west's consumer culture.

i mean just look at russia before putin (i.e., before putin advocated for the revival of the russian orthodox church in national life, which is being laid as the foundational bedrock for russian national-identity replacing both the soviet-style national-ideology and the post-soviet yeltsin oligarchic capitalist free-for-all insanity), look at contemporary south korea (i.e., commodified to almost a point of historic cultural-extinction, draining the national life out of south korea while almost intentionally forgetting the rich historic national-identity/ideology of korean dynasties that provided for much more fulfilling and less (spiritually) "miserable" lives for koreans.)

the hegemonic ideology of capitalist-democracy and liberalism triumphing over all the "reactionary totalitarianisms" seems quite naive and historically amnesic for my tastes.
but i guess the world looks better through rose-tinted glasses when you're living in the most materially developed nation on the planet,

although, still, as i stated in my previous post above, the pre-development level of poverty in south korea is what led my family to move to the US.

i guess the suffering of poverty, and even the contemporary nihilistic capitalist insanity, was a bit too "insufferable" and miserable for certain koreans, which is why they had to painfully leave their homeland behind (i.e., capitalism not only impoverished south korea prior to its rapid development after the 1980s, it also fundamentally corrupted day-to-day life in south korea, with everyone selfishly focused on individual-gains and money-making rather than the society at large.)
basically, south korean society is toxic as fuck today, while less than 40 years ago it was poor as fuck. :/

In general the soviets won the early stages: First satellite, first man in space, first woman, first photos of back side of the moon... right into the present too, never mind the moon landing. The Shuttle was a mediocre hunk of junk. Russians built one to study it, because they couldn't understand the motivation behind it's inherently flawed asymmetrical design:

also, one thing about cuba, i'm not so sure the recent lifting of sanctions on cuba is necessarily a "good" thing, especially if the government of raul castro or what have you has made talks to invite american investment/transnationals into cuba's borders.

because if the latter is the case, the entire foundation of cuba's anti-capitalist national-identity will (slowly but surely) crumble, which is of course what the US wants over the long term, but i dunno about how the cubans are playing it off...

here's a long video about the recent cuba issue by that weirdo neckbeard maoist guy:

BORKED

tl;dr:
he's saying raul castro might have "sold out" cuba and/or the whole of latin-america (e.g., venezuela, ecuador, etc.) to capitalism by "normalizing" relations with the US, and that these recent (socalled) "lifting of sanctions" against cuba by the US might have some malicious intentions behind it, i.e., promoting american capitalist investment and trade in cuba which, for a small island nation, might overwhelm it and cause the cuban castroist national-identity to collapse over time; also, it gives off a bad model/influence for other "anti-capitalist" latin-american countries that might follow suit with cuba and invite (more) foreign investment.

sanctions can, and often are, used as part of a bigger global political-play by the dominant hegemonic powers/spheres of (capitalist) political influence.
they're applied, and removed, often for very tactical reasons... so there's reason to be skeptical about the recent "de-sanctioning" of cuba.

foreigners can purchase a certain percentage stake in cuban companies now, etc.
cuba will probably go down the china-route (i.e. "dengist" market-socialism) or their socialist system will collapse over time from this.. the latter might be more plausible than the former due to cuba being much smaller and much more vulnerable to the influence of foreign capital flows than china is/was.

wasnt the US space program accelorated with brit and kraut rocket dudes shipped in after WWII? i can remember something about the kraut and brit way of working being WAAAAYYY to slow for the yanks - who were used to getting shit done in a quarter of the time.

might be miles off though - its been a long day and my brain is running on fumes.

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wasnt the US space program accelorated with brit and kraut rocket dudes shipped in after WWII? i can remember something about the kraut and brit way of working being WAAAAYYY to slow for the yanks - who were used to getting shit done in a quarter of the time.

might be miles off though - its been a long day and my brain is running on fumes.

Don't know about Brits, but for sure there were a few Kraut rocket scientists who were given the choice of life in prison, or a nice govt salary and home in the suburbs.